Khrushchev becomes Soviet premier - Mar 27, 1958 - HISTORY.com Khrushchev becomes Soviet premier Publisher A+E Networks On March 27, 1958, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev replaces Nicolay Bulganin as Soviet premier, becoming the first leader since Joseph Stalin to simultaneously hold the USSR’s two top offices. Khrushchev, born into a Ukrainian peasant family in 1894, worked as a mine mechanic before joining the Soviet Communist Party in 1918. In 1929, he went to Moscow and steadily rose in the party ranks and in 1938 was made first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party. He became a close associate of Joseph Stalin, the authoritarian leader of the Soviet Union since 1924. In 1953, Stalin died, and Khrushchev grappled with Stalin’s chosen successor, Georgy Malenkov, for the position of first secretary of the Communist Party. Khrushchev won the power struggle, and Malenkov was made premier, a more ceremonial post.

In 1955, Malenkov was replaced by Bulganin, Khrushchev’s hand-picked nominee. In 1956, Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his totalitarian policies at the 20th Party Congress, leading to a “thaw” in the USSR that saw the release of millions of political prisoners. Almost immediately, the new atmosphere of freedom led to anti-Soviet uprisings in Poland and Hungary. Khrushchev flew to Poland and negotiated a diplomatic solution, but the Hungarian rebellion was crushed by Warsaw Pact troops and tanks. Khruschev’s program of de-Stalinization was opposed by some hard-liners in the Communist Party, and in June 1957 he was nearly ousted from his position as first secretary. After a brief struggle, he secured the removal of Malenkov and the other top party members who had opposed him and in 1958 prepared to take on the post of premier. On March 27, 1958, the Supreme Soviet–the Soviet legislature–voted unanimously to make First Secretary Khrushchev also Soviet premier, thus formally recognizing him as the undisputed leader of the USSR.

In foreign affairs, Premier Khrushchev’s stated policy was one of “peaceful coexistence” with the West. He said, “we offer the capitalist countries peaceful competition” and gave the Soviet Union an early lead in the space race by launching the first Soviet satellites and cosmonauts. A visit to the United States by Khrushchev in 1959 was hailed as a new high in U.S.-Soviet relations, but superpower relations would hit dangerous new lows in the early 1960s. In 1960, Khrushchev walked out of a long-awaited four-powers summit over the U-2 affair, and in 1961 he authorized construction of the Berlin Wall as a drastic solution to the East German question. Then, in October 1962, the United States and the USSR came close to nuclear war over the USSR’s placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba. After 13 tense days, the Cuban Missile Crisis came to an end when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the offensive weapons in exchange for a secret U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba.

The humiliating resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an agricultural crisis at home, and the deterioration of Soviet-Chinese relations over Khrushchev’s moderate policies all led to growing opposition to Khrushchev in the party ranks. On October 14, 1964, Leonid Brezhnev, Khrushchev’s protege and deputy, organized a successful coup against him, and Khrushchev abruptly stepped down as first secretary and premier. He retired to obscurity outside Moscow and lived there until his death in 1971. Related Videos Nikita Khrushchev - History Learning Site Nikita Khrushchev Citation: C N Trueman "Nikita Khrushchev" historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 9 Mar 2015. 16 Aug 2016. Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963 .

When Khrushchev backed down and removed Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba, his credibility was in tatters within the Soviet Union’s political hierarchy and it was only a matter of time before he was edged out of office. Nikita Khrushchev was born in 1894 at Kalinovka near to the Ukraine border. He was the son of a mineworker. Such a background politicised Khrushchev and he fought for the Red Army during the Russian Civil War . After the Bolshevik success in this and with the war ending, Khrushchev became a miner. While working as a miner, he continued his education by attending high school. Khrushchev worked for the Communist Party in Kiev and then in Moscow. While in the capital, he gained a reputation for efficiency and in 1935 Khrushchev was appointed Secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee. He would have needed the support of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to have held such a post.

Khrushchev further enhanced his reputation by being very closely associated with the building of the Moscow Underground – the construction of which was deemed an engineering success and a sign to the world of Soviet skills that were more closely associated with the West. While it was the engineers who were rightly credited with the success of this project, the managerial skills of Khrushchev within such a prestigious project were also recognised. Between 1938 and 1947, Khrushchev was mainly involved in affairs that affected the Ukraine. During World War Two , Khrushchev assisted military commanders fighting there, primarily in the Kursk Salient. Khrushchev was Prime Minister of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic from the time the Nazis were expelled to 1947. In 1947, Stalin selected Khrushchev to reorganise the Soviet Union’s agricultural production. There can be little doubt that Stalin trusted his ability and by the time of Stalin’s death in 1953, Khrushchev was a member of the Communist Party’s Presidium. On September 12th 1953, he was appointed First Secretary of the Party.

Such a position allowed Khrushchev to build up supporters throughout the Party’s administrative machinery and to develop his power base. He used his influence to get Bulganin, his nominee, elected as Premier in February 1955. Few doubted that while Bulganin was the political figurehead of the USSR, the man with the real power was Khrushchev. In January 1956, Khrushchev made his boldest move for power. At the 20th Party Congress he attacked Stalin and the ‘cult of personality’ he had developed. The 1956 Suez Crisis diverted the West’s attention away from the USSR for a short time while the USSR’s grip on the Warsaw Pact was increased when Hungary was invaded and the short-lived uprising brutally suppressed. On March 27th 1958, Khrushchev became Premier of the USSR while he continued to hold the post of First Secretary after Bulganin was effectively pushed to one side. Khrushchev gave the appearance of wanting to introduce a thaw in the Cold War and his appointment was greeted with cautious optimism in the West, especially after the austere rule of Stalin.

However, his seeming feelers for peace were mixed with more hostile statements and Khrushchev became a hard man to predict – whether it was taking off his shoe and banging it on a table as he did at the UN to emphasise a point he was making or storming out of an international meeting in Geneva leaving others sitting there without the leader of the world’s second most powerful nation. Yet this was also the man who within his own country went out to meet the people – something Stalin never did. Whether his posturing on the international stage was mere showmanship is difficult to tell – however, it was certainly unusual in an age when diplomatic work was carried out invariably in a genteel manner and ‘by the book’. Whether Khrushchev was a ‘hawk’ or a ‘dove’ is also difficult to tell. After the Cuban Missile Crisis most, if not all, assumed he was a ‘hawk’. However, this may not have been an accurate assessment. Khrushchev, along with many other members of the Politburo, was angered that America had placed military equipment, including B52 bombers, in Turkey.

However, as Turkey was a member of NATO, from the West’s point of view, this was entirely legal and acceptable. To the Soviet Union it was provocative behaviour as Turkey shared a border with the USSR. When Khrushchev had the opportunity to counter this by placing medium range nuclear missiles in Cuba, he took it. He argued that they gave the Communist Caribbean island greater protection against another Bay of Pigs incident. During the crisis, Khrushchev gave no indication of climbing down against J F Kennedy. When he did, it greatly weakened his political position at home despite his arguments that he had got America to promise never to invade Cuba. His colleagues in Moscow were also very concerned that the traditional positive relationship between the USSR and Communist China was also deteriorating and that border issues might spark off a Sino-Soviet war. Khrushchev was levered out of office in October 1964 and succeeded by Alexei Kosygin , as Prime Minister, and Leonid Brezhnez as Party Leader. Khrushchev spent the rest of his years in retirement and died in 1971.

Russia - The Khrushchev Era The Khrushchev Era Russia Table of Contents The end of the Stalin era brought immediate liberalization in several aspects of Soviet life. Party leader Nikita S. Khrushchev denounced Stalin's tyrannical reign in 1956, signaling a sharp break with the past. Because Khrushchev lacked the all-encompassing power of Stalin, his time in office was marked by continuous maneuvering against political enemies much more real than Stalin's had been. Party control of cultural activity became much less restrictive with the onset of the first "thaw" in the mid-1950s. Khrushchev attempted reforms in both domestic and foreign policy, with mixed results. During his tenure (1953-64), world politics became much more complex as the insecurities of the Cold War persisted; Khrushchev ultimately was undone by a combination of failed policy innovations in agriculture, party politics, and industry. Collective Leadership and the Rise of Khrushchev Stalin died without naming an heir, and none of his associates had the power to make an immediate claim to supreme leadership.

At first the deceased dictator's colleagues tried to rule jointly, with Malenkov holding the top position of prime minister. The first challenge to this arrangement occurred in 1953, when the powerful Beria plotted a coup. However, Beria, who had made many enemies during his bloody term as security chief, was arrested and executed by order of the Presidium. His death reduced the inordinate power of the secret police, although the party's strict control over the state security organs ended only with the demise of the Soviet Union itself (see Internal Security Before 1991, ch. 10). After the elimination of Beria, the succession struggle became more subtle. Malenkov found a formidable rival in Khrushchev, whom the Presidium elected first secretary (Stalin's title of general secretary was abolished after his death) in September 1953. Of peasant background, Khrushchev had served as head of the Ukrainian party organization during and after World War II, and he was a member of the Soviet political elite during the late Stalin period.

The rivalry between Malenkov and Khrushchev manifested itself publicly in the contrast between Malenkov's support for increased production of consumer goods and Khrushchev's stand-pat backing for continued development of heavy industry. After a poor showing by light industry and agriculture, Malenkov resigned as prime minister in February 1955. Because the new prime minister, Nikolay Bulganin, had little influence or real power, the departure of Malenkov made Khrushchev the most important figure within the collective leadership. At the Twentieth Party Congress, held in February 1956, Khrushchev further advanced his position within the party by denouncing Stalin's crimes in a dramatic "secret speech." Khrushchev revealed that Stalin had arbitrarily liquidated thousands of party members and military leaders, thereby contributing to the initial Soviet defeats in World War II, and had established what Khrushchev characterized as a pernicious cult of personality.

With this speech, Khrushchev not only distanced himself from Stalin and from Stalin's close associates, Molotov, Malenkov, and Lazar Kaganovich, but he also abjured the dictator's use of terror as an instrument of policy. As a direct result of the "de-Stalinization" campaign launched by Khrushchev's speech, the release of political prisoners, which had begun in 1953, was stepped up, and some of Stalin's victims were posthumously rehabilitated. Khrushchev intensified his campaign against Stalin at the Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961, winning approval to remove Stalin's body from the Lenin Mausoleum, where it had originally been interred. De-Stalinization encouraged many in artistic and intellectual circles to speak out against the abuses of the former regime. Although Khrushchev's tolerance for critical creative works varied during his tenure, the new cultural period--known as the "thaw"--represented a clear break with the repression of the arts under Stalin. After the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev continued to expand his influence, although he still faced opposition.

His rivals in the Presidium, spurred by reversals in Soviet foreign policy in Eastern Europe in 1956, potentially threatening economic reforms, and the de-Stalinization campaign, united to vote him out of office in June 1957. Khrushchev, however, demanded that the matter be put to the Central Committee of the CPSU, where he enjoyed strong support. The Central Committee overturned the Presidium's decision and expelled Khrushchev's opponents (Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich), whom Khrushchev labeled the "antiparty group." In a departure from Stalinist procedure, Khrushchev did not order the imprisonment or execution of his defeated rivals but instead placed them in relatively minor offices. Khrushchev moved to consolidate his power further in the ensuing months. In October he removed Marshal Zhukov (who had helped Khrushchev squelch the "antiparty group") from the office of defense minister, presumably because he feared Zhukov's influence in the armed forces.

Khrushchev became prime minister in March 1958 when Bulganin resigned, thus formally confirming his predominant position in the state as well as in the party. Despite his rank, Khrushchev never exercised the dictatorial authority of Stalin, nor did he ever completely control the party, even at the peak of his power. His attacks on members of the "antiparty group" at the Twenty-First Party Congress in 1959 and the Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961 suggest that his opponents retained support within the party. Khrushchev's relative political insecurity probably accounted for some of his grandiose pronouncements, for example his 1961 promise that the Soviet Union would attain communism by 1980. His desire to undermine opposition and mollify critics explained the nature of many of his domestic reforms and the vacillations in his foreign policy toward the West. Foreign Policy under Khrushchev Almost immediately after Stalin died, the collective leadership began altering the conduct of Soviet foreign policy to permit better relations with the West and new approaches to the nonaligned countries. Malenkov introduced a change in tone by speaking out against nuclear war as a threat to civilization.

Khrushchev initially contradicted this position, saying capitalism alone would be destroyed in a nuclear war, but he adopted Malenkov's view after securing his domestic political position. In 1955, to ease tensions between East and West, Khrushchev recognized permanent neutrality for Austria. Meeting President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Geneva later that year, Khrushchev confirmed a Soviet commitment to "peaceful coexistence" with capitalism. Regarding the developing nations, Khrushchev tried to win the goodwill of their national leaders, instead of following the established Soviet policy of shunning the governments while supporting local communist parties. Soviet influence over the international alignments of India and Egypt, as well as of other Third World countries, began in the middle of the 1950s. Cuba's entry into the socialist camp in 1961 was a coup for the Soviet Union. With the gains of the new diplomacy came reversals as well.

By conceding Yugoslavia's independent approach to communism in 1955 as well as by his de-Stalinization campaign, Khrushchev created an opening for unrest in Eastern Europe, where the policies of the Stalin era had been particularly onerous. In Poland, riots brought about a change in communist party leadership, which the Soviet Union reluctantly recognized in October 1956. A popular uprising against Soviet control then broke out in Hungary, where the local communist leaders, headed by Imre Nagy, called for a multiparty political system and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact (see Glossary), the defensive alliance founded by the Soviet Union and its East European satellites in 1955. The Soviet army crushed the revolt early in November 1956, causing numerous casualties. Although the Hungarian Revolution hurt Soviet standing in world opinion, it demonstrated that the Soviet Union would use force if necessary to maintain control over its satellite states in Eastern Europe. Outside the Soviet sphere of control, China grew increasingly restive under Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong.

Chinese discontent with the new Soviet leadership stemmed from low levels of Soviet aid, feeble Soviet support for China in its disputes with Taiwan and India, and the new Soviet doctrine of peaceful coexistence with the West, which Mao viewed as a betrayal of Marxism-Leninism. Against Khrushchev's wishes, China embarked on a nuclear arms program, declaring in 1960 that communism could defeat "imperialism" in a nuclear war. The dispute between militant China and the more moderate Soviet Union escalated into a schism in the world communist movement after 1960. Albania left the Soviet camp and became an ally of China, Romania distanced itself from the Soviet Union in international affairs, and communist parties around the world split over whether they should be oriented toward Moscow or Beijing. The monolithic bloc of world communism had shattered. Soviet relations with the West, especially the United States, seesawed between moments of relative relaxation and periods of tension and crisis. For his part, Khrushchev wanted peaceful coexistence with the West, not only to avoid nuclear war but also to permit the Soviet Union to develop its economy.

Khrushchev's meetings with President Eisenhower in 1955 and President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and his tour of the United States in 1959 demonstrated the Soviet leader's desire for fundamentally smooth relations between the West and the Soviet Union and its allies. Yet Khrushchev also needed to demonstrate to Soviet conservatives and the militant Chinese that the Soviet Union was a firm defender of the socialist camp. Thus, in 1958 Khrushchev challenged the status of Berlin; when the West would not yield to his demands that the western sectors be incorporated into East Germany, he approved the erection of the Berlin Wall between the eastern and western sectors of the city in 1961. To maintain national prestige, Khrushchev canceled a summit meeting with Eisenhower in 1960 after Soviet air defense troops shot down a United States reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet territory. Finally, mistrust over military intentions clouded East-West relations during this time. The West feared the implications of Soviet innovations in space technology and saw in the buildup of the Soviet military an emerging "missile gap" in the Soviet Union's favor.

By contrast, the Soviet Union felt threatened by a rearmed Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), by a United States alliance system that seemed to be encircling the Soviet Union, and by the West's superior strategic and economic strength. To offset the United States military advantage and thereby improve the Soviet negotiating position, Khrushchev in 1962 tried to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, but he agreed to withdraw them after Kennedy ordered a blockade around the island nation. After coming close to war during the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet Union and the United States took steps to reduce the nuclear threat. In 1963 the two countries established a "hot line" between Washington and Moscow to provide instant communication that would reduce the likelihood of accidental nuclear war. In the same year, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which forbade nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere. Khrushchev's Reforms and Fall Throughout his years of leadership, Khrushchev attempted to carry out reform in a range of fields.

The problems of Soviet agriculture, a major concern of Khrushchev's, had earlier attracted the attention of the collective leadership, which introduced important innovations in this area of the Soviet economy. The state encouraged peasants to grow more on their private plots, increased payments for crops grown on collective farms, and invested more heavily in agriculture. In his dramatic Virgin Lands campaign in the mid-1950s, Khrushchev opened vast tracts of land to farming in the northern part of the Kazak Republic and neighboring areas of the Russian Republic. These new farmlands turned out to be susceptible to droughts, but in some years they produced excellent harvests. Later innovations by Khrushchev, however, proved counterproductive. His plans for growing corn and increasing meat and dairy production failed miserably, and his reorganization of collective farms into larger units produced confusion in the countryside. Khrushchev's attempts at reform in industry and administrative organization created even greater problems. In a politically motivated move to weaken the central state bureaucracy, in 1957 Khrushchev did away with the industrial ministries in Moscow and replaced them with regional economic councils.

Although he intended these economic councils to be more responsive to local needs, the decentralization of industry led to disruption and inefficiency. Connected with this decentralization was Khrushchev's decision in 1962 to recast party organizations along economic, rather than administrative, lines. The resulting bifurcation of the party apparatus into industrial and agricultural sectors at the oblast (province) level and below contributed to the disarray and alienated many party officials at all levels. Symptomatic of the country's economic difficulties was the abandonment in 1963 of Khrushchev's special seven-year economic plan (1959-65) two years short of its completion. By 1964 Khrushchev's prestige had been damaged in a number of areas. Industrial growth had slowed, while agriculture showed no new progress. Abroad, the split with China, the Berlin crisis, and the Cuban fiasco hurt the Soviet Union's international stature, and Khrushchev's efforts to improve relations with the West antagonized many in the military. Lastly, the 1962 party reorganization caused turmoil throughout the Soviet political chain of command.

In October 1964, while Khrushchev was vacationing in Crimea, the Presidium voted him out of office and refused to permit him to take his case to the Central Committee. Khrushchev retired as a private citizen after his successors denounced him for his "hare-brained schemes, half-baked conclusions, and hasty decisions." Yet along with his failed policies, Khrushchev must also be remembered for his public disavowal of Stalinism and the greater flexibility he brought to Soviet leadership after a long period of monolithic terror. Custom Search Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Khrushchev Primary Sources Nikita Khrushchev, the grandson of a serf and the son of a coal miner, was born in Kalinovka, Ukraine on 5th April, 1894. After a brief formal education Khrushchev found work as a pipe fitter in Yuzovka. During the First World War Khrushchev became involved in trade union activities and after the October Revolution joined the Bolsheviks .

In January, 1919, Khrushchev joined the Red Army and fought against the Whites in the Ukraine during the Civil War . After leaving the army he returned to Yuzovka where he returned to school to finish his education. Khrushchev remained active in the Communist Party and in 1925 was employed as party secretary of the Petrovsko-Mariinsk. Lazar Kaganovich , the general-secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, was impressed with Khrushchev and invited him to accompany him to the 14th Party Congress in Moscow. With the support of Kaganovich, Khrushchev made steady progress in the party hierarchy. In 1938 Khrushchev became secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party and was employed by Joseph Stalin to carry out the Great Purge in the Ukraine. The following year he became a full member of the Politburo. Khrushchev and Stalin Khrushchev was aware that he had to be very careful in his dealings with Stalin: "Even though I agreed with Stalin completely, I knew I had to watch my step in answering him.

One of Stalin's favourite tricks was to provoke you into making a statement - or even agreeing with a statement - which showed your true feelings about someone else. It was perfectly clear to me that Stalin and Beria were very close. To what extent this friendship was sincere, I couldn't say, but I knew it was no accident that Beria had been Stalin's choice for Yezhov's replacement." Khrushchev also worked closely with Lavrenti Beria . "Beria and I started to see each other frequently at Stalin's. At first I liked him. We had friendly chats and even joked together quite a lot, but gradually his political complexion came clearly into focus. I was shocked by his sinister, two-faced, scheming hypocrisy." Second World War After the invasion of Poland in 1940 Khrushchev was given the responsibility of suppressing the Polish and Ukrainian nationalists. When the German Army invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941, Khrushchev arranged the evacuation of much of the region's industry. During the Second World War Khrushchev granted the rank lieutenant general, and was given the task of organizing guerrilla warfare in the Ukraine against the Germans.

When the German Army retreated in 1944 Khrushchev was once again placed in control of the Ukraine and the rebuilding of the region. Khrushchev job was made more difficult by the famine of 1946. This brought him into conflict with Joseph Stalin who accused Khrushchev of concentrating too much on feeding the people living of the Ukraine rather than exporting food to the rest of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev was demoted in 1951 and replaced as the minister responsible for agriculture. On the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Gregory Malenkov became both prime minister and head of the Communist Party. He appeared to be a reformer and called for a higher priority to be given to consumer goods. He later argued that he was not fully aware of the crimes committed by Stalin: "I still mourned Stalin as an extraordinary powerful leader. I knew that his power had been exerted arbitrarily and not always in the proper direction, but in the main Stalin's strength, I believed, had still been applied to the reinforcement of Socialism and to the consolidation of the gains of the October Revolution.

Stalin may have used methods which were, from my standpoint, improper or even barbaric, but I hadn't yet begun to challenge the very basis of Stalin's claim to a special honour in history. However, questions were beginning to arise for which I had no ready answer. Like others, I was beginning to doubt whether all the arrests and convictions had been justified from the standpoint of judicial norms. But then Stalin had been Stalin. Even in death he commanded almost unassailable authority, and it still hadn't occurred to me that he had been capable of abusing his power." First Secretary of the Communist Party In September, 1953, Khrushchev became first secretary of the Communist Party. He arranged for the execution of Lavrenti Beria , head of the Secret Police and gradually he gained control of the party machinery. In 1955 he joined with Nikolai Bulganin to oust Gregory Malenkov from power. He also decided to condemn Stalin's period of rule in the Soviet Union. During the 20th Party Congress in February, 1956, Khrushchev launched an attack on the rule of Joseph Stalin .

He argued: " Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation and patient co-operation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correctness of his position, was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. This was especially true during the period following the 17th Party Congress, when many prominent Party leaders and rank-and-file Party workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of communism, fell victim to Stalin's despotism." Khrushchev condemned the Great Purge and accused Stalin of abusing his power. During the speech he suggested that Stalin had ordered the assassination of Sergy Kirov . Later Khrushchev launched an investigation into the assassination of Kirov and other Stalin crimes.

However, according to one insider, Feliks Chuev , the Shvernik Commission "found nothing against Stalin" but "Khrushchev refused to publish it - it was of no use to him." In the summer of 1956 Gregory Malenkov , Nikolai Bulganin , Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich attempted to oust Khrushchev This was unsuccessful and Khrushchev now purged his opponents in the Communist Party. Mikhail Gorbachev was one of those who supported Khrushchev's actions: "Khrushchev's secret speech at the XXth Party Congress caused a political and psychological shock throughout the country. At the Party krai committee I had the opportunity to read the Central Committee information bulletin, which was practically a verbatim report of Khrushchev's words. I fully supported Khrushchev's courageous step. I did not conceal my views and defended them publicly.

But I noticed that the reaction of the apparatus to the report was mixed; some people even seemed confused." De-Stalinzation Khrushchev's de-Stalinzation policy encouraged people living in Eastern Europe to believe that he was willing to give them more independence from the Soviet Union. In Hungary the prime minister Imre Nagy removed state control of the mass media and encouraged public discussion on political and economic reform. Nagy also released anti-communists from prison and talked about holding free elections and withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact . Khrushchev became increasingly concerned about these developments and on 4th November 1956 he sent the Red Army into Hungary . During the Hungarian Uprising an estimated 20,000 people were killed. Nagy was arrested and replaced by the Soviet loyalist, Janos Kadar . Imre Nagy was imprisoned and executed in 1958. In 1958 Khrushchev replaced Gregory Malenkov as prime minister and was now the undisputed leader of both state and party. In the Soviet Union he promoted reform of the Soviet system and began to place an emphasis on the production of consumer goods rather than on heavy industry.

Khrushchev eased censorship in the Soviet Union and allowed One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich , by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to be published. Some pointed out that this was part of his de-Stalinization policy and did not reflect a genuine increase in freedom. His critics pointed out that books such as Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak were still banned. In 1959 Khrushchev announced a change in foreign policy. In 1959 visited the United States and offered "the capitalist countries peaceful competition". Khrushchev was due to attend the Paris Summit Conference in 1960 when a reconnaissance plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. He cancelled the meeting and later that year at the Union Nations he attacked Western influence in the Congo. When John F. Kennedy replaced Dwight Eisenhower as president of the United States he was told about the CIA plan to invade Cuba . Kennedy had doubts about the venture but he was afraid he would be seen as soft on communism if he refused permission for it to go ahead. Kennedy's advisers convinced him that Castro was an unpopular leader and that once the invasion started the Cuban people would support the ClA-trained forces.

Khrushchev and Kennedy On April 14, 1961, B-26 planes began bombing Cuba's airfields. After the raids Cuba was left with only eight planes and seven pilots. Two days later five merchant ships carrying 1,400 Cuban exiles arrived at the Bay of Pigs . The attack was a total failure. Two of the ships were sunk, including the ship that was carrying most of the supplies. Two of the planes that were attempting to give air-cover were also shot down. Within seventy-two hours all the invading troops had been killed, wounded or had surrendered. At the beginning of September 1962, U-2 spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was building surface-to-air missile (SAM) launch sites. There was also an increase in the number of Soviet ships arriving in Cuba which the United States government feared were carrying new supplies of weapons. President Kennedy complained to the Soviet Union about these developments and warned them that the United States would not accept offensive weapons (SAMs were considered to be defensive) in Cuba. On September 27, a CIA agent in Cuba overheard Castro's personal pilot tell another man in a bar that Cuba now had nuclear weapons.

U-2 spy-plane photographs also showed that unusual activity was taking place at San Cristobal. However, it was not until October 15 that photographs were taken that revealed that the Soviet Union was placing long range missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy's first reaction to the information about the missiles in Cuba was to call a meeting to discuss what should be done. Fourteen men attended the meeting and included military leaders, experts on Latin America, representatives of the CIA, cabinet ministers and personal friends whose advice Kennedy valued. This group became known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. Over the next few days they were to meet several times. At the first meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, the CIA and other military advisers explained the situation. After hearing what they had to say, the general feeling of the meeting was for an air-attack on the missile sites. Remembering the poor advice the CIA had provided before the Bay of Pigs invasion, John F. Kennedy decided to wait and instead called for another meeting to take place that evening. By this time several of the men were having doubts about the wisdom of a bombing raid, fearing that it would lead to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

The committee was now so divided that a firm decision could not be made. Cuban Missile Crisis The Executive Committee of the National Security Council argued amongst themselves for the next two days. The CIA and the military were still in favour of a bombing raid and/or an invasion. However, the majority of the committee gradually began to favour a naval blockade of Cuba. Kennedy accepted their decision and instructed Theodore Sorensen , a member of the committee, to write a speech in which Kennedy would explain to the world why it was necessary to impose a naval blockade of Cuba. As well as imposing a naval blockade, Kennedy also told the air-force to prepare for attacks on Cuba and the Soviet Union. The army positioned 125,000 men in Florida and was told to wait for orders to invade Cuba. If the Soviet ships carrying weapons for Cuba did not turn back or refused to be searched, a war was likely to begin. Kennedy also promised his military advisers that if one of the U-2 spy planes were fired upon he would give orders for an attack on the Cuban SAM missile sites. The world waited anxiously. A public opinion poll in the United States revealed that three out of five people expected fighting to break out between the two sides.

There were angry demonstrations outside the American Embassy in London as people protested about the possibility of nuclear war. Demonstrations also took place in other cities in Europe. However, in the United States, polls suggested that the vast majority supported Kennedy's action. On October 24, President John F. Kennedy was informed that Soviet ships had stopped just before they reached the United States ships blockading Cuba. That evening Khrushchev sent an angry note to Kennedy accusing him of creating a crisis to help the Democratic Party win the forthcoming election. On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy another letter. In this he proposed that the Soviet Union would be willing to remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a promise by the United States that they would not invade Cuba. The next day a second letter from Khrushchev arrived demanding that the United States remove their nuclear bases in Turkey. While the president and his advisers were analyzing Khrushchev's two letters, news came through that a U-2 plane had been shot down over Cuba. The leaders of the military, reminding Kennedy of the promise he had made, argued that he should now give orders for the bombing of Cuba.

Kennedy refused and instead sent a letter to Khrushchev accepting the terms of his first letter. Khrushchev agreed and gave orders for the missiles to be dismantled. Eight days later the elections for Congress took place. The Democrats increased their majority and it was estimated that Kennedy would now have an extra twelve supporters in Congress for his policies. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the first and only nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The event appeared to frighten both sides and it marked a change in the development of the Cold War . The Military and the leaders of the Communist Party felt humiliated by Khrushchev climbdown over Cuba. His agricultural policy was also a failure and the country was forced to import increasing amounts of wheat from Canada and the United States. On 14th October, 1964, the Central Committee forced Khrushchev to resign. He lived in retirement in Moscow where he wrote his memoirs, Khrushchev Remembers (1971). Nikita Khrushchev died on 11th September, 1971.

Nikita Khrushchev Assignment Did the ouster of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 indicate that the Soviet Union had fundamentally changed its political system since the death of Stalin in 1953? Background After Stalin's death in March 1953, his successors realized that they could not continue to use his methods. Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev , (5/17 April 1894 - 11 September 1971), a self-made man who had entered the Politburo in 1939, soon emerged as the leading figure. Over the next five years Khrushchev out maneuvered his political rivals and became the most powerful political figure in Russia. Born in 1894, Khrushchev--unlike Lenin and most of the other Soviet leaders--was the son of a miner and the grandfather of a serf. After a village education, he began work as a pipe fitter at the age of fifteen in Donetsk. Because of his factory employment, he was not conscripted into the tsarist army during World War I.

In 1918 he became a member of the Bolshevik party and served in the Red Army during the Civil War. In the 1920s he began a rapid rise in the party ranks as a full time party worker, and by 1933 he had become the second secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee. During the early 1930s Khrushchev consolidated his hold on the Moscow party and emerged on the national scene. In 1934, at the Seventeenth Party Congress, he became a full member of the Central Committee of the Party. He was a firm supporter of Stalin in those years and participated in the purges of party leadership. By 1939, he had become a full member of the Politburo. During the war Khrushchev was attached to the Soviet Army with the rank of lieutenant general. He was the political adviser to Marshal Andrei Yeromenko during the defense of Stalingrad (Volgograd). In 1949 Stalin called him back to Moscow, where he took over his old job as head of the Moscow city party and concurrently was appointed a secretary of the Central Committee.

Khrushchev became more and more involved in agriculture and proposed a new scheme for the creation of agrogorods ("farming towns"). Within six months of Stalin's death in 1953 and the execution of the deputy prime minister and KGB chief, Lavrentii Beria, Khrushchev engaged in a power struggle with Georgii Malenkov, Stalin's heir apparent, and gained the decisive margin by his control of the party machinery. :In September 1953 he replaced Malenkov as first secretary and in 1955 removed Malenkov from the premiership in favor of his hand-picked nominee, Marshal Nikolai Bulganin. On the night of 24-25 February 1956, during the 20th Party Congress in Moscow, Khrushchev delivered his memorable Secret Speech about the excesses of Stalin's one-man rule, attacking the late Soviet ruler's "intolerance, his brutality, his abuse of power" and blaming it on the "cult of personality" that Stalin had forged.

The sight of the First Secretary of the Communist Party exposing the wrongful executions of the purges of the 1930s and the excesses of Soviet repression had far-reaching effects. The resulting "thaw" in the Soviet Union led to the release of thousands of political prisoners and the "rehabilitation" of many thousands more who had perished. The destalinization movement also had repercussions in the communist countries of Eastern Europe. Poland revolted against its government in October 1956, and Hungary followed shortly afterward. Faced with open revolution, Khrushchev flew to Warsaw on 19 October and ultimately acquiesced in the Polish leader Wladyslaw Gomulka's solution, which allowed the Poles a great deal of freedom. But Khrushchev's decided to crush the Hungarian Revolution by force, largely because of the Hungarian Premier Imre Nagy's decision to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. In June 1957 Khrushchev almost lost his position, and, although a vote in the Presidium actually went against him, he managed to reverse this by appealing to the full membership of the party Central Committee.

In retaliation, he secured the permanent disgrace of Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, and others, who were labeled members of the anti-party group. In March 1958 he assumed the premiership of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev's record in power was a decidedly mixed one. On one hand he could repeatedly assert the doctrine of peaceful coexistence and could visit with President Dwight Eisenhower in 1959 in a "spirit of Camp David," yet he could also be combative as in the U-2 Incident or the construction of the Berlin Wall . His attempt, in 1962, to place Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba , led to a tense confrontation in October of that year, yet he also helped to negotiate the 1963 Test Ban Treaty. Khrushchev also had to deal with Sino-Soviet split, which partly resulted from Chinese insistence on all-out "war against the imperialists," no matter what the case. During Khrushchev's time in office, he had to deal with many disparate pressures. Intellectuals urged greater freedom of expression, while the bureaucracy felt that reform would get out of hand.

Khrushchev himself, on one hand, refused to allow Boris Pasternak to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, while, on the other hand, he personally permitted the 1962 publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, with its denunciation of Stalinist repression. Khrushchev's desire to reduce conventional armaments in favor of nuclear missiles was bitterly resisted by the Soviet military. His repeated efforts to improve agriculture and decentralize the party structure antagonized many of those who once supported him. He opened up more than seventy million acres of virgin land in Siberia and Central Asia and sent thousands of laborers to till them; but his plan was unsuccessful, and the Soviet Union eventually again had to import wheat from Canada and the United States.

On 14 October 1964, in the "Little October Revolution," the Central Committee accepted Khrushchev's orchestrated request to retire from his position as the Party's first secretary and chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union because of "advanced age and poor health." For almost seven years thereafter, Khrushchev lived quietly in Moscow and at his country dacha as a special pensioner of the Soviet government. He was mentioned in the Soviet press occasionally and appeared in public only to vote in Soviet elections. The one change in this ordered obscurity came in 1970 with the publication of his memoirs (Khrushchev Remembers) in the United States and Europe, although not in the Soviet Union. Almost 48 hours elapsed after his death before it was announced to the Soviet public. He was denied a state funeral and internment in the Kremlin Wall, although he was allowed a quiet burial at Novodevichy Convent Cemetery in Moscow. In sum, Khrushchev was a thoroughgoing political pragmatist who had learned his Marxism on the job, but he never hesitated to adapt his beliefs to the political urgencies of the moment.

His experience with international realities confirmed him in his doctrine of peaceful coexistence with the non-Communist world--in itself a drastic break with established Soviet Communist teaching. Whatever one might say about his personal eccentricities, his boisterous nature, his vulgarity and his bewildering policy shifts, he was a man of his people. His son Sergei pronounced a short eulogy at the cemetery: "There were those who loved him, there were those who hated him, but there were few who would pass him by without looking in his direction." Timeline 17 April 1894, Born in Kalinovka, Kursk Province. 1912-18, Worked as a metal fitter in the generator plants of the Ruchenkov and Pastukhov mines. 1918, Joined the Bolsheviks. 1919, Joined the Red Army and served as a soldier and party worker in the Ninth Rifle Division, attached to Budyennii's First Mounted Army. 1922, Began work in the Iuzovka Party organization. 1924, Married Nina Petrovna.

1925-34, Rose through party ranks and elected to the Central Committee at the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934. 1939, Made full member of Politburo. 1941-43, Served as a political commissar on various fronts during the war with the rank of lieutenant general. 1947, Accused of insufficient vigilance in stamping out nationalism in Ukraine. Relieved of position as First Secretary of Ukraine, although he retained his post of Chairman of the Ukrainian Soviet and his position on Politburo (Restored to full power in the Ukraine the following year). 1949, Made head of Moscow oblast and city committees and made Secretary of the Central Committee. Given control of agriculture and began to propose his "agrogorod" scheme. 22 March 1953, Became First Secretary of the party after Stalin's death. 28 June 1953, Lavrentii Beriia, head of KGB, arrested. (He was executed in December.) 1954, Virgin Lands campaign.

1955, Khrushchev consolidated power when Malenkov (because of participation in the "Leningrad Case") resigned as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. 1956, Secret Speech to 20th Party Congress that denounced the "cult of personality." 1957, Experiments began with the Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) and the decentralization of light industry with special regional economic councils (sovnarkhozy) set up. 1957, In June Malenkov, Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich orchestrated a Presidium vote to dismiss Khrushchev by a vote of 8-4 (Suslov, Furtseva and Mikoyan supported Khrushchev), but the Central Committee overturned the vote. Malenkov sent as director of a power station in a remote corner of Central Asia; Kaganovich made director of a cement factory in Sverdlovsk; and Molotov became ambassador to Mongolia. 1957, First sputnik launched. 1958, Assumed the role of chairman (Premier) of the Soviet of Ministers as well as party leader, forcing Bulganin to resign.

1960, U-2 spy plane piloted by F.Gary Powers shot down. September 1960, Addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York. 1961, Met Kennedy in Vienna. April 1961, Iurii Gagarin became the first man in space. 1961, Stalin's body removed from Lenin's Mausoleum. 1962, Khrushchev ordered the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day In the Live of Ivan Denisovich. June 1962, Ordered the shooting of striking workers in Novocherkassk. Hundreds died with more executed and jailed. October 1962, Cuban missile crisis. 1963, US-USSR hotline established. August 1963, Nuclear test-ban treaty signed. October 1964, Deposed by Leonid Brezhnev, et al, in the Little October Revolution. 11 September 1971, Died.

WWW sites There are some on the web (see my HIS 242 course and remarks on the "Thaw" in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev; I also have further biographical information there along with a more extensive list of web links). His 1956 Secret Speech denouncing the crimes of the Stalin era is available on the web, as is the article from Time Magazine naming Khrushchev the man of the year for 1957. When Vice President Richard Nixon visited the Moscow Fair with Khrushchev on 24 July 1959, they engaged in a famous kitchen debate about the pros and cons of communism and democracy. Other useful sites include:

Question: Who did Kruschev replace to become Soviet Prime Minister in 1958?
Answer: BULGANIN